Tamagotchis Are Coming to Your Phone: Slowly Kill Them at Your Leisure

(AV CLUB) by William Hughes – After decades of being confined to little plastic eggs (and the occasional, usually Japan-only video game), nostalgia-rich pet simulators Tamagotchi are finally coming to people’s phones, where we can all fuck up raising them at our own convenience.

Bandai Namco announced the release of a new mobile game, My Tamagotchi Forever, this week, utilizing the now-standard freemium model—that is, the download is free, but you can trade some money or ad-watching time for bonuses and perks for your little tykes—to lure people in. Per Mashable, the game’s designers apparently haven’t skimped on the shit-based nature of the classic Tamagotchi experience, either; prepare to drag and flick a lot of adorable cartoon poos into a toilet while you’re training your little friend. (Maybe don’t combine that one with the much-touted “tickle” feature, huh?)

It’s not clear yet whether these mobile-based, AR-ready pets (available on both Android and iOS) will be as, uh, fragile as the originals, who could drop dead from something as trivial as failing to feed or clean them for a couple of days at a time. (Kids, right?) We’re not even sure if the mobile version will allow us to treat our virtual monster to the ultimate punishment for its relentless tendency to crap all over our floors, either, although it’s possible that there’ll eventually be an in-app purchase for that.